The Prince Who Ran Away

The baby from the river grew up in Pharaoh's palace, and he grew up a prince. Moses learned all the wisdom of Egypt. But he knew whose son he really was.

When he was forty years old, Moses went out to see his own people, the Israelites. They were still slaves, carrying bricks under the hot sun until their shoulders were raw. Then Moses saw an Egyptian beating one of them, one of his own people.

Moses' face went hot. He looked this way. He looked that way. (He did not think to look up.) He saw no one, so he struck the Egyptian and killed him, and he hid the body in the sand.

Moses thought his people would understand. Here was a prince who had come to set them free!

The next day he found two Hebrew men fighting.

"Why are you hitting your own brother?" Moses said to the one who had started it.

The man shoved him away. "Who made you our prince and our judge? Are you going to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian?"

Moses went cold all over. "Then everyone knows what I did," he whispered.

Long afterward, God's people would throw that same question at someone else.

Pharaoh heard what Moses had done, and Pharaoh wanted him dead. So the prince of Egypt ran. He ran past the brickyards, past the cities, across the desert, all the way to the land of Midian, and there he sat down beside a well.

The seven daughters of Reuel, a priest of Midian, came to water their father's sheep. They had just filled the troughs when some rough shepherds drove them off.

Moses stood up. "Leave them alone!"

The shepherds backed away. Then the prince of Egypt drew water for seven strangers' sheep, bucket after bucket, until every last one had drunk. (That is a lot of buckets for a man who used to have servants.)

The girls got home early. "Why are you back so soon?" their father asked.

"An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds!" they said. "He even watered the whole flock!"

"Well, where is he?" said Reuel. "You left him sitting at the well? Go and get him, and ask him to supper!"

So Moses came to supper, and he stayed to look after Reuel's sheep. Reuel gave him his daughter Zipporah to be his wife, and they had a son. Moses named him Gershom, which sounds like "a stranger there."

Many years went by. The king who had wanted Moses dead died, and still God's people were slaves. They groaned and cried out for help. God heard them. He remembered his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw his people, and God knew.

Moses had tried to free his people with his own two fists. It got him a dead man in the sand, a brother who would not listen, and somebody else's sheep to keep. A rescuer who strikes and then runs cannot save anyone for long.

So God kept the rescue in his own hands.

At last another prince came to his own people, God's own Son. He grew up in a carpenter's house, not a palace. The leaders asked him, "Who gave you the right to do these things?" When a friend swung a sword to defend him, he healed the man it cut. He did not run. He let himself be killed to set his people free, and he was laid in a sealed tomb. On the third day he walked out alive. His name is Jesus.